Many a time, it is the sound of our past that we keep dancing to, way past the present and deep into the future. We keep an old melody alive, singing its praise and applauding its orchestral eloquence. It was, once, but that is not enough. We embody it as the future, we worship it.
Forgetting that the drums ringing from our past are in the past for a reason. Yes, to direct our path. To illumine, if you will, the hearer, but not to become the object of the future.
The symphony of the past remains today, to serve as a reference for what better composition tomorrow promises, only if we sit and write anew a compelling opus.
Maybe it will seem uncertain until the time it is played first, and perhaps its writing will take tumultuous days and weary nights. Yet, an incomplete piece, a work in progress, holds more promise of a brighter future than one laid to rest, complete and perfect.
Because its story is set. We already know what becomes of it. We can analyse and study its composition. We can tear it down and praise the painstaking effort of its composer. But that is all. For all ages to come, it is a work done and over. It is a work of wonder.
But its best advantage, perhaps, will be in its ability to evoke a sense of greatness in another composer, not to remake a done work, but to make a better one for the future.
And therein lies the power of past sound. Not in making it the future, but in making a future from it.
